new to this

Re: new to this

This particular message thread is for people to tell how they found their family, not for getting advice onlearning to research.

However, since you asked.

First and foremost, get some type of genealogy program for your computer. There are some that are free and some that cost a few bucks. Do some online searching to find the best one for you. I have used Familytreemaker since the beginning of my research about 13 years ago. Some of these can be downloaded. After you get a program installed on your own computer, start with yourself and what you know. Then add your grandparents, great grandparents and so on as far back as you are sure of the information. If you are a young person and your parents were born after 1930, youwill not find them in the census since the census as of now stops at 1930. Sometime next year the 1940 censuswill be available. Because of a federal law, the censusmust be held for 72 years before being released. If youknow your grandparents names and they were in the US before1930 you should be able to find them in the census records.After you get a couple of generations on your own programthen start looking for other things. My e mail address ismbmjlm22@aol.com should you wish to contact me for furtherinformation. One note of caution, if you wish to make useof the Ancestry member tree, start the same way. But do not, I repeat, do not use any hints there by selecting themby checking the box and incorporating them into your tree. This way will lead to JUNKOLOGY. Most trees created that way were created the same way by just selecting hints and incorporating them into their trees and so on and so forth until they have a big mess. It is perfectly alright to look at the various hints from the various trees for leads. You may want to make contact via the ancestry message system. I do that frequently. Most of the time though you will find that the person you contacted just selected the hints from another persons tree and does not have any real information for you. Just take it easy and do not hurry. Genealogy research takes time and patience.